January 22, 2010

The Brooklyn Museum Commons: Trees (etc) Grow There

When it comes to progressive, public-friendly copyright policies,
few art museums can match The Brooklyn Museum. In 2004, it was the
first art museum to adopt a Creative Commons license, allowing any non-commercial copying of any image in which the museum holds the copyright. In 2008, it was the third institution to join the Flickr Commons,
making available high-resolution images of Public Domain artworks from
its collection. Last week, the musuem published the detailed copyright
status of every image in its online collection--that's over 12,000 artworks--and made this information available through its API so that anyone can easily cross-reference the data with their own copyright research. It also switched to a less restrictive Creative Commons license, allowing non-commercial remixing as well.

The museum deserves credit just for the effort required to determine the copyright status of 12,000 works--a complicated, painstaking process
that took Chief of Technology Shelley Bernstein, Head of Digital
Collections and Services Deborah Wythe and a team of interns over two
years to complete. "Identifying what is actually under copyright was
one of the most challenging parts of the project," said Wythe, who, for
artworks that were under copyright, contacted every artist (or artist's
heir) she and her team could locate to get permission to display
full-size, high-resolution images of their work on the museum's site.
Images that were no longer under copyright were listed as "no known
copyright." (Example.)

More impressive than the amount of labor that went into the project
is the fact that the Brooklyn Museum was willing to go down this road
in the first place. It is easier and safer, from a liability
perspective, to only display thumbnails of artworks and to put the onus
of clearing copyrights in specific images on members of the public who
seek to use them. But it is more consistent with a non-profit cultural
institution's public mission to make its collection as accessible as
possible, as transparently as possible.

"Participating in Flickr Commons, following the Public Domain conversations on Wikimedia,
and generally being in touch with the huge community of people who want
images made us realize that we could be better community members by
being as honest and open as we can be about what we know about our
images," said Wythe.

Likewise, despite the common (though questionable) view that it's
more lucrative for museums to assert as much control over their
"intellectual property" as copyright law allows, the Brooklyn Museum
apparently understands that its mission is more effectively fulfilled,
and the public better served, when the museum allows its collection to
be reproduced, remixed and disseminated in as many (non-commercial)
ways as possible.

"I've come to realize that there has to be a
lot of give and take with a project like this," said Bernstein.
"Copyright is complicated, so we have to figure out a way to do as much
as we can and clarify as much as we can to the visitors of our website,
while still erring on the side of caution. While that's not ideal and
we'd love things to be much simpler and clear-cut, we hope it's a start
and a step in the right direction."

Comments

When it comes to progressive, public-friendly copyright policies,
few art museums can match The Brooklyn Museum. In 2004, it was the
first art museum to adopt a Creative Commons license, allowing any non-commercial copying of any image in which the museum holds the copyright. In 2008, it was the third institution to join the Flickr Commons,
making available high-resolution images of Public Domain artworks from
its collection. Last week, the musuem published the detailed copyright
status of every image in its online collection--that's over 12,000 artworks--and made this information available through its API so that anyone can easily cross-reference the data with their own copyright research. It also switched to a less restrictive Creative Commons license, allowing non-commercial remixing as well.

The museum deserves credit just for the effort required to determine the copyright status of 12,000 works--a complicated, painstaking process
that took Chief of Technology Shelley Bernstein, Head of Digital
Collections and Services Deborah Wythe and a team of interns over two
years to complete. "Identifying what is actually under copyright was
one of the most challenging parts of the project," said Wythe, who, for
artworks that were under copyright, contacted every artist (or artist's
heir) she and her team could locate to get permission to display
full-size, high-resolution images of their work on the museum's site.
Images that were no longer under copyright were listed as "no known
copyright." (Example.)

More impressive than the amount of labor that went into the project
is the fact that the Brooklyn Museum was willing to go down this road
in the first place. It is easier and safer, from a liability
perspective, to only display thumbnails of artworks and to put the onus
of clearing copyrights in specific images on members of the public who
seek to use them. But it is more consistent with a non-profit cultural
institution's public mission to make its collection as accessible as
possible, as transparently as possible.

"Participating in Flickr Commons, following the Public Domain conversations on Wikimedia,
and generally being in touch with the huge community of people who want
images made us realize that we could be better community members by
being as honest and open as we can be about what we know about our
images," said Wythe.

Likewise, despite the common (though questionable) view that it's
more lucrative for museums to assert as much control over their
"intellectual property" as copyright law allows, the Brooklyn Museum
apparently understands that its mission is more effectively fulfilled,
and the public better served, when the museum allows its collection to
be reproduced, remixed and disseminated in as many (non-commercial)
ways as possible.

"I've come to realize that there has to be a
lot of give and take with a project like this," said Bernstein.
"Copyright is complicated, so we have to figure out a way to do as much
as we can and clarify as much as we can to the visitors of our website,
while still erring on the side of caution. While that's not ideal and
we'd love things to be much simpler and clear-cut, we hope it's a start
and a step in the right direction."